Carlos Salinas de Gortari

Carlos Salinas de Gortari (3 April 1948-) was President of Mexico from 1 December 1988 to 30 November 1994, succeeding Miguel de la Madrid and preceding Ernesto Zedillo.

Biography
Carlos Salinas de Gortari was born in Mexico City, Mexico on 3 April 1948, the son of Commerce Minister Raul Salinas Lozano. He became a member of the youth wing of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and he attended Harvard in the United States before becoming involved in Mexican politics. In 1988, he became the PRI's presidential candidate, and he may have won through electoral fraud. Salinas planned to modernize Mexico, end anti-clericalism, and end the redistribution of land in Mexico, causing the PRI to lose its two-thirds majority in congress. He also supported neoliberal economic reforms, privatized the banking system and the phone company of Mexico, oversaw Mexico's transition into NAFTA, divided the Guadalajara Cartel's lands between its capos after the arrest of Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, and reduced inflation, but the end of his term saw the politically-motivated assassinations of Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, Luis Donaldo Colosio, and Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu. He left office in 1994.